by Richard Gowan | Jul 21, 2008 | Cooperation and coherence, Off topic
It’s a sad fact of life that very few rock bands address the sort of issues that we write about on this blog. The future of UN reform? With the admittedly mighty exception of Megadeath’s “United Abominations” album last year (sample lyrics: “Saddam Hussein violated 17 UN resolutions/ The UN was asked to join the war in Iraq/ The US invaded, Ha!/ There was no UN!) it’s a pretty thin field.
What about the G8 and the worsening economy? Not even Megadeath’s Dave Mustaine has opined on the Hokkaido summit in song (I’m not counting Bono and Geldof here, on the grounds that they have sensible things to say, and they say them rather than sing). So a big hand, please, for the Midnight Juggernauts, an Australian band who seem to want to stuff the entire cooperation and coherence agenda into their song “Into the Galaxy”: “United Nations/ Inter Relations/ A declaration/ Of hypertension/ Emerging Summits/ Pre-emptive plummet…” That’s just verse two: you try to work out what they’re warbling on about…
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6SKNEYvZvQ]
* On balance, my answer is no, we simply can’t be seen to advocate that falsetto, although you have to admire the unashamed use of synths.
by Alex Evans | Jul 9, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global system
Lots of people converging on the need for an integrated approach to food, climate and energy this week (funny how the same ideas often seem to sprout in different places at the same time). Just as I was about to publish my paper on multilateralism and scarcity on Monday, I saw Indian PM Manmohan Singh quoted as saying that,
Climate change, energy security and food security are interlinked, and require an integrated approach.
Then yesterday Mark Malloch Brown and I spoke at a meeting in Parliament organised by the All Party Groups on Africa and Conflict, which was on (guess what?) the conflict risk posed in Africa by the convergence of peak oil, climate change and soaring food prices – here’s the speech I gave.
But the prize for joined-up thinking of the week goes to the United Nations University in Japan, who yesterday launched a new site on the three scarcity issues entitled Our World 2.0: one to add to the bookmarks list…
Update: I’ve done a piece on the G8 and joining up the dots on scarcity issues on Comment is Free.
by David Steven | Jul 8, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Europe and Central Asia, North America
Like Alex, I spoke at the United Nations University symposium on climate change and innovation on Friday – and one notable theme was the ferocious kicking that Kyoto received from some of the speakers.
Leading the onslaught were Ted Nordhaus, author of The Death of Environmentalism, and Gwyn Prins, who runs the LSE Mackinder Centre for the Study of Long Wave Events.
Nordhaus, writing with Michael Shellenberger, has called for Kyoto to be scrapped in the current issue of Democracy. “Kyoto is dead,” they write, “and that’s a good thing. In its place, we need massive global investment in new clean energy technology.”
Gwyn Prins takes a similar line, an argument he set out in a pamphlet written with Steve Rayner, and subsequent op-ed for Nature (which he says received a bigger response than anything the journal has previously published).
On Friday, both attempted to bang a few nails into Kyoto’s coffin. Gwyn, in particular, was adamant that the protocol had long been dead. Only a few diehards – emotionally incapable of accepting they are wrong – had failed to admit its passing:
We have to find a way, diplomatically, for the Europeans to join in [to a new approach to climate control] without losing face. You don’t get progress if you tell people that they must admit they made a mistake. Most of us don’t like to admit that we have made mistakes.
Prins and Nordhaus agree on a great deal. On Kyoto, they argue that:
- Its targets have had no impact on those countries that adopted them – not even slowing the rate of increase in their emissions.
- In Europe, any emissions reductions that have occurred are due to factors that precede the implementation of the Kyoto protocol.
- European emissions are rising faster than American ones (a ‘hard fact’ that embarrasses European politicians who relish looking down on ‘ugly Americans’ as Gwyn put it).
On a future climate regime, they contend that:
- Kyoto’s failure means that the Copenhagen agreement should exclude binding targets.
- Instead, a ‘bottom-up’ approach should be adopted, with investment in technology at its heart. This will reduce emissions more effectively than binding targets.
- Leadership on climate is shifting away from Europe and towards the United States.
I am going to leave future frameworks to another post. In this one – and below the jump – I look at Kyoto’s impact on Europe. There’s a lot of detail in the main post, so here are the key conclusions:
- It’s too early to say whether Kyoto has worked as advertised in Europe – but the evidence suggests that Europe as a whole will meet, or even exceed its targets.
- Later reductions in emissions seem likely to be due to policy responses to Kyoto. Governments are reacting to the pressure that a binding target applies.
- It’s likely that Europe would be emitting more if Kyoto had never been ratified – and it’s a real stretch to argue that the US is doing better than the EU on emissions.
(more…)
by Alex Evans | Jul 4, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security
David and I are both out in Japan to speak at a conference on climate change organised by the United Nations University .
Highlight of the day so far: sitting next to the engineering director at Nissan’s technology planning department over lunch, who (it transpired) knew everything there is to know about electric cars. Back at the end of May, I wrote that electric cars were miles away from commercial roll-out. Well, turns out that they’re much closer to reality than I’d thought. Nissan will be rolling out electric cars in Japan in 2010, followed by the US and (in Europe) Denmark in 2011, and then the rest of Europe in 2012.
Think that’s interesting? Try this: on current electricity prices in Japan, a full charge for the car (enough for about 100 miles of driving) might cost as little as 50 cents . Meanwhile, the cars themselves won’t be much more expensive than conventional combustion engine equivalents either.
All in all, a pretty compelling proposition for consumers with oil prices as high as they are. Which left me wondering two things.
The first is simply: will electric power systems be able to cope with the additional demand if take-up of electric cars is rapid? The UK, like many countries, has seen its capacity margin (the gap between peak electricity demand and the amount of power that can be generated with all power stations running at full tilt ) diminish in recent years. People whose job it is to worry about resilience fret about whether the lights would stay on if there were big outages in generating capacity at the same time as spikes in demand – we came close to such a scenario a few weeks back. If cars that used to run on petrol start running on electric power instead, then that problem gets much tougher.
Second, it will be interesting to see what the carbon savings involved look like. Electric cars are only as green as the kind of generating capacity used to charge them up. If the power’s from wind or nuclear, then they’re fabulously clean; if it’s from coal, then they might be even dirtier than petrol cars. So if electric cars do end up adding lots more demand on power grids, governments and power companies had better get a move on with installing low carbon generating capacity if they want them to be a blessing rather than a curse.
All in all, it’s exciting that electric cars are so close – but the power sector must be biting its fingernails.
Update: Sam Roggeveen has more on both of these issues.
by Alex Evans | Jun 14, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Europe and Central Asia
Looks like Sarkozy’s the latest European leader to start getting behind convergence of national emission entitlements to equal per capita levels as the central principle in how to share out a global emissions budget. Here’s an excerpt from the communique from his talks with Angela Merkel:
France and Germany consider paramount the goal to achieve a global agreement in the framework of the United Nations for the post 2012 period, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibility. The international climate regime should be based on legitimate principles of equity, such as long-term convergence of emission levels per capita in the various countries.
Full Elysee statement here; for the backstory, start here.
